Author Gaby Soutar

I am told I have a quiet voice, like a catarrh-riddled pygmy shrew. To project and become louder, they say you should open your mouth wide, keep your tongue down and sit up straight. Can’t be bothered,...

Being a Brownie was a total success for me, as I was awarded a tea-making badge. Since then, apart from brief membership of the Tufty road-crossing one, I haven’t been a member of any clubs. I’m not...

I was never a nerd at school, apart from a brief period in P6 when I rocked a mullet, NHS aviators and never took off my ski jacket, even through the hot August of ‘85. That may have slotted me temporarily...

Life is like an avocado. It’s pear-shaped, and, at the centre of things, there’s a huge vacuum. Now that I’ve got my existential angst out of the way, I can talk more positively about this fruit,...

When you’re an ever-expanding restaurant reviewer, you’ve got to shoehorn in as many exercise classes as you can. This place was lucky enough to get me after a hot yoga session. I struggled across...

‘Hello Gaby, I wasn’t expecting you”. Nobody ever recognises me, I pass through life invisibly. I’m sure if I was a criminal, and they tried to do an Identikit, they’d quickly give up and I’d...

I’m going to escape to my island paradise. Not Barbados, nor the Galapagos (to hang with my tortoise pals). I’ve decided on Inchcailloch, one of the small islands on Loch Lomond. The name, in Gaelic,...

I hope to be reincarnated as a restaurant reviewer’s plus one. They get to eat all the food, and don’t have to do any work. No aide memoires have to be made while they vacantly shovel in the...

It was pouring with rain when we visited Sonder, so we experienced a moment of chrysalism – “the amniotic tranquillity of being indoors during a thunderstorm.” This is a neologism invented by writer...

Happy unbirthday to me. I have an annual tradition of going to El Cartel on Thistle Street to celebrate my magical day. I’ll always get a frozen margarita (sometimes two) in the flavour du jour, a couple...